GMAT Essays (AWA)

The following appeared in an article in a human resources magazine:
"Six months ago, in an experiment aimed at boosting worker productivity, Company Z started providing free gourmet lunches to its employees. The Company hoped that these office lunches would encourage employees to remain in the building during lunch-hour and motivate employees to work harder throughout the day. A survey found that soon after the lunch program was implemented, the average number of hours worked by most Company Z employees increased dramatically. During this same period, the Company's profits also increased substantially. Thus, it is safe to say that the lunch program was a huge success and that Company Z should make the program permanent."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what


In the above argument, the author states about the strategy of a company to boost its work productivity. He informs that the company was successful in increasing the amount of hours an employee spent within the work place, there by increasing the productivity of each employee. This resulted in consequent increase of the profits of the company, he adds.Though his claim may have merit the author bases his argument on several questionable premises and assumptions making one really doubt the validity of this argument.

Primarily, the author states that there has been an increase in the company's profits due to the increase in the amount of time that each employee was working in the office.However, he doesn't provide any statistical data about the profit that the company gained and direct contribution of an employee's work input to it.Secondly, the author confuses the reader with his ambiguous statements that there was an increase in the profits of the company in the same period when the programme was installed. He doesn't clearly state the reason behind the company's increase in profits.The argument lacks evidential support and is hence unacceptable.

In addition, the author makes several assumptions that remain unproven.Firstly, he assumes that the number of hours that the employee spends in the workplace is equal to the amount of quality working hours spent by the employee to the company. There are many inevitable and unproductive activities of the company that the employee may be engaged in during his time in the company like engaging himself in cross training activities, attending meetings with the management, reporting his daily activity to his manager etc. Secondly, the author assumes that the employees' quality of work have been constant through out his shift in the company. There have been proven theories that the productivity graph of the employee drops significantly with the amount of time he invests in his work. This also proves that the author's assumption is wrong.

While the author's argument has several key holes in it, this is not to state that it lacks base totally.The author can strengthen his argument by citing practical data of how the extra working hours of each employee added to the profit of the company as a final product.

Summing up, the author's argument is based on invalid assumptions and premises. If the author wants to change his readers' minds on the issue, he needs to largely re sturucture the argument, provide evidential support and ineplicate his assumptions. Without these things, it is likely that his argument will convince very few people.